New Delhi, April 8
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is arriving in India tomorrow on a four-day official visit to signal Beijing’s perceptional leap about India and with a positive mindset of resolving the decades-old border dispute while going full throttle for intensifying bilateral cooperation in all spheres.

South Block mandarins are upbeat about Mr Wen’s visit despite the fact that the nearly two-year-old Chinese promise of treating Sikkim as an integral part of India is yet to reflect in official maps and records of China.

Mr Wen is arriving in Bangalore tomorrow heading an over-100 member delegation, though his official talks with the top Indian leadership, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is scheduled on April 11. Among a dozen-odd agreements that India and China are going to sign during Mr Wen’s visit, there is one agreement on which the world’s attention would be focussed: on thrashing out political parameters and guiding principles for resolving the border dispute.

To finetune these agreements and political parameters and guiding principles, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei arrived here today to hold talks with his Indian counterpart, Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran. The Wu-Saran talks are likely to be a day-long affair tomorrow which will set the stage for talks between the two Prime Ministers.

This will be followed up the next day by another important interaction between the two countries – the Special Representatives-level talks on resolving the border dispute. The two Special Representatives — India’s National Security Adviser M. K. Narayanan and his Chinese counterpart Dai Bingguo — would be holding talks on April 10 and the outcome of their talks is likely to be announced the next day by South Block.

This will be the fifth round of Special Representatives-level talks. Mr Dai has featured in all the rounds so far while from the Indian side Mr Brajesh Mishra and the late J. N. Dixit have participated in two rounds each. This will be Mr Narayanan’s maiden round of Special Representatives-level talks.

It is well known about China that if it wishes to engage with any country, it does so in a pro-active manner and goes ahead with multi-sectoral improvement of bilateral relations with that country while putting on fast track resolution of all problems, including border dispute, with that country. Chinese engagement with the USA and with Russia (with which it had a serious border dispute) are the relevant cases in point here.

Similar positive signals about India have started emanating from Beijing already, South Block officials are at pains to point out. “Beijing Review”, the Chinese official organ, in its latest issue coinciding with Mr Wen’s India visit, has described India and China as schoolmates that are now studying in a colossal institute called “Modernisation University”.

“Beijing Review” talks of China having made a perceptional leap vis a vis India “which has resulted in a wave of learning from India”. It also mentions a long list of fields in which India has done a better job than China — software development, IT research, use of foreign funds, banking system and outsourcing work.